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Saturday, December 10, 2011

Thirty Days Left

In thirty days, we begin our new journey. The transition will be over by then. On January 9th we begin our work with NOMADS that will have us doing a variety of projects from repairing, painting, digging, mixed with some fellowship and fun times with other NOMAD volunteers.

On Saturday Nov 26th, we moved our RV to Colonia del Rey in the Flour Bluff area of Corpus Christi. This served two purposes. One – it gives us the opportunity to actually live in the RV when it is not parked in front of our house. Two – it forced us to get cracking on getting the rest of our things moved into the RV which in turn made us think about getting rid of more stuff.

After we got set up, we sold our 2nd vehicle which provided a nice cash infusion. While Carol has been working on the inside, I finally got my garage moved. For some that may not be a monumental task but for me it was. My garage in our stick house has 940 square feet and was chocked full of stuff.

The collage below shows the garage after I dismantled the wood shop and made three trips to the city dump. I moved all of my stuff into a side room, rearranged and tagged the remaining tools for the estate sale we had just before Thanksgiving.
My last major task was to load up the truck with things that would go into my new garage, which, by the way, is significantly smaller. The cavernous space lacks shelves which makes for lots of wasted space.

The challenge was to make room for everything and have things organized where I do not need to completely empty the garage just to get one or two items out. First order of business was to build shelves to make order from chaos. This was like playing with an adult version of an Erector Set.

So off, I go, measuring twice and cutting once. Assembling the shelf outside of the RV first to make sure things fit, then taking it apart and reassembling it inside the garage. After that, I loaded up the shelves.What do you think? Pretty cool. The air compressor will never have to move unless I need it away from the RV. The trusty blue boy has a nice home and also keeps things from sliding off the side of the shelves. The only problem is that white battery box to the right of Blue Boy. That battery box is taking up valuable floor space in the garage. However there is room to move it next to the other battery box. (That is another project.) OK, now some of you are thinking, “Where did he hide the Workmate?”

Well of course there is room for it to go in front of the shelves. You will notice to the right of Blue Boy is a tool box that is just tossed on top of the white battery box. That will change when I get the battery box moved. At this point, I’ve emptied two containers that previously held various small items. Those items are now stored away neatly on a shelf. I feel pretty good about this now, except I can’t find anything just yet. I figure it will take a little adjusting but the bulk of my garage is now in its new home.

Inside the RV, Carol had a couple of small projects for me. The biggest one was doing something about the completely useless bath towel racks. Seriously people, do the RV designers ever use the RV’s they design? How dry do you suppose the burgundy towel will get when it is sandwiched between the blue one and the roll of V.I.P. (very important paper). The wall behind the toilet is completely void of a towel rod so that is where one went. Down with the old and up with the new.

My wife is happy, I am happy and no, I did not drill blindly in the wall nor did I attach the towel rods with screws. Instead, I used rivets. I figure if rivets can hold the skin on an air plane, they can certainly hold a towel rack on the wall.

While at it, I also removed the single hand towel ring from the wall next to bathroom sink and installed two that matched the other towel rods. Notice the size of those screws. Those babies are 1” long. Apparently RV manufacturers must use one size screw for all things.

I carefully drilled a 3/16” hole in the wall going just deep enough to penetrate the wall. Then using my trusty rivet tool, I attached the bracket with a single rivet. (You can click the picture to enlarge it so the rivet is more apparent.) So now I have two towel holders next to bathroom sink and two bath towel rods located in the right places.

Some of you may wonder why I would put two V.I.P. holders on the wall next to the sink. I suppose I could have mounted one 18” towel rod on this wall. We opted for the V.I.P. holders because they would fit below the medicine cabinet door (when opened) and the towels/wash clothes would not be dragging on the sink. Also, I did not read any warnings on the packaging that indicated using V.I.P holders in the manner would void the manufacturer’s warranty.

I think we’ve had a productive week. In addition to the garage and bathroom mods, we also managed to review three large bins of photos, made electronic copies of the photos we wanted, got our new permanent address set up in Livingston and get our home decorated for Christmas.